Fiber optic cables are now used in many land, water, air and space applications where optical fiber provides the communication link between a vehicle and a tethered point on the land, water, air and in space. Optical fiber is wound onto a bobbin in a manner that will allow the fiber to unwind (or payout) during the travel of the vehicle. In order to provide stability of the fiber on the bobbin and allow successful payout, application of an adhesive with the proper strength characteristic onto the fiber is required. Current adhesive application is accomplished during or after the winding process. One method of application currently in use applies adhesive during winding and involves pressureless dies and wicking fixtures. In this method, a fiber is pulled through a bath of adhesive and then wound onto a bobbin in a wet state. If a winding flaw occurs, the correction can be made by either physically moving the fiber to eliminate the flaw or unwinding past the flawed area and rewinding. In both cases, flaw correction produces a change in the wet adhesive coating due to contact or removal which can affect the adhesive performance in the corrected area. In addition, it is necessary to clean the fiber during rewind to remove the wet adhesive to ensure that none deposits on winder pulleys or corrupts the fiber remaining on the supply spool. The correction of winding flaws using these techniques is a highly time-consuming process.
Another current method applies the adhesive after the winding of each layer of fiber onto the bobbin. Adhesive is diluted by mixing with various solvents and the mixture is sprayed onto the bobbin using an air brush. This method requires typically several minutes of drying time to ensure that the majority of the solvents have evaporated. Winding flaws are corrected prior to spraying to avoid the correction problems associated with the die/wick method described above. The spraying method does not produce uniform coating of fiber due to operator dependence and the application technique. Further, solvents used in the adhesive mixture may cause damage in the optical fiber.